


The New York Enigma (Book I)

by teasoni



Series: The Spy Who Loved Me [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, American Revolution, Assassin's Creed III, Canon-Typical Violence, Culper Ring, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Miscommunication, Mystery, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Canon, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Spies & Secret Agents, Templars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25218889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teasoni/pseuds/teasoni
Summary: The peace left in the wake of the revolution and the Templar's occupation of the New World is a tentative one. Connor and his Assassins do what they can to hold things together, but the wound is still too raw, the world still too angry. But they manage - they always, somehow, manage. Injustice may be a pestilence that will prove incurable, but it was never in Connor's nature to give up, and now that the revolution is done he turns his attention to other things.And, for a while, all seems to be well - until two wounded strangers turn up on his doorstep and whispers of a new Templar threat rise upon the wind.
Relationships: Ratonhnhaké:ton | Connor/Bethany Morgan, Ratonhnhaké:ton | Connor/Original Female Character(s), Ratonhnhaké:ton | Connor/Reader
Series: The Spy Who Loved Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827112
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> repost of a previous work
> 
> more like a second draft but yknow what can you do

_London, October 1775_

Yvonne was roused by the sound of stones against her window.

The sound found her even in the depths of her sleep, and at first she thought it was rain; but, no, it was surely too cold for rain, and though the tapping was faint, it was singular and had no rhythm. Rising, Yvonne crept across the room to the window, and surely enough there came the tapping of gravel as it was flung at the pane. The blackness beyond was pierced only by the light of a lamp upon the street, and so she eased the window open to lean out of it, knowing only one person who could possibly find sense in throwing stones in the middle of the night.

“Marie!” she hissed; movement shifted in the street below, and surely enough a girl emerged into the pallid light of the lamp, her face as bright and as white as the moon, marred though it was by the thick crust of blood over mouth and chin. The sight made Yvonne’s belly lurch. “What in God’s name are you doing?!”

The girl in the street cast her eyes, cunning and star-bright, along the cobbles to check she was not being followed. Even now, so late at night, this part of the city writhed with movement – vagabonds and peddlers of crime haunted those streets. “I’ve not time to explain now!” she hissed. Her breath clouded in the cold. “Just let me in!”

Yvonne grit her teeth, gave a final frown, and shut the window.

Thankfully, the night was without wind, and the house sat heavy and sagging and still. Marie looked even worse when Yvonne could inspect her closely: her lip was split deeply, her clothing set askew, and her hair fallen from its pins. Worst of all was the wound on her mouth, though it had stopped bleeding, and blood was smeared across both Marie’s face and hand she had used to wipe it.

“Your excuse had best be a fine one indeed,” Yvonne whispered as they scuttled through the labyrinth of rooms and low-ceilinged halls, bowing with the mildew of winter. The old beams creaked, alive with woodworm and the hushed passages of feet overhead. Marie’s face was sallow, alight with something Yvonne could not place, but that made her gut twist, and the smile she hoped was encouraging instead lay twisted and frightful on her injured mouth. “You said you were meeting Théo!”

Only when they were safely sealed the narrow room they shared did Marie speak. “I was,” she began. “I mean, that is, I _did_ – only on my return I was held up for my money, and when I said I had none, I was set upon.” She gestured to the wound on her face. “As you can see.”

Yvonne remained stranded between concern and fury. She knew how Marie was given over to spells of madness at times; she was known to act out of her sensibilities on occasion. Yvonne reached for Marie’s coat. “Let’s free you of this. And let me at least wake your –,”

But Marie slapped her hands away with such speed that Yvonne recoiled, shocked. The sound of it lingered in the small space, and even nestled away in the bowels of the building, their breath clouded in the cold.

“I’ll be all right,” Marie promised with a rueful smile. “I can clean up on my own. I shan’t keep you from your bed any longer.”

Yvonne frowned. Marie had never denied her help before, not in all the years she’d known her. But it was not her place to question such things, and part of her did not wish to know the reason for it, so Yvonne nodded silently and did not stop her as she made to depart.

“You seem strange,” she told Marie as she made to leave, the door-handle cold beneath her hand. “Are you sure you want no company?”

Marie’s voice was softer this time, more tender. “I’m quite sure. Goodnight, Yvonne.”

“Goodnight.”

Marie closed the door and felt her way through the dark, back to the small, filthy kitchen. It was there, by the weak moonlight that filtered through the smog, that she made to remove her coat, grateful that Yvonne was not there to see the ghastly bruises on her arms.

Marie did not return to her bed that night. Yvonne woke to find it empty, but she knew better than to press any further. She did not see Marie until late into the morning, and in the daylight she found Marie’s glazed inattention even more difficult to stomach. Ever since they were old enough to talk, Marie and Yvonne had shared everything – never had there been any secrets between them. But things were different, now, and Yvonne knew that there was something Marie was not telling her. Eventually, Yvonne could no longer stand to watch Marie stumble through the laundry out in the frozen yard – something she usually undertook with diligence and speed – and took her leave. As she ducked back into the gloom of the building, she stumbled directly into her father.

He stared down at her, concerned by her paleness, before his eyes leapt to where Marie sat on her stool, wrist-deep and unmoving as she stared down at the murky water. His lips pressed together, displeased, before he urged Yvonne inside with an affectionate click of his tongue. She went gladly.

Victor wandered out into the yard. It was a miserable kind of thing, walled high on all sides by brick and weeping wood, the ground a slurry of ice and mud. The hem of Marie’s skirt was caked with it. He went to her, surveying the somber buildings around them, clustered together so tightly that they nearly blocked out the light. From his pocket he drew an apple, and held it out to her; she peered at it, the first piece of fresh food she had been offered in weeks. When she did not take it, however, he set it down in her lap.

“Thank you,” she said, though she did not look at him, and she did not touch the apple.

“Your mood is changed,” Victor said after a spell of silence.

“It isn’t,” she replied.

“You’re no better at hiding things from me than Yvonne is, little one.”

Marie could not help but smile, though it was thin. “Perhaps not.”

Victor gave a sigh and once more cast his eyes upon their surroundings, accepting that he would get nothing from her. “You only need to call.”

Marie sat alone after he left, the apple heavy in her lap, between her legs. She shuddered and tore it away, desperate to be rid of the weight there; it hit the frozen ground and bounced, once, twice, until rolling away into the shadow of the yard. She wiped her nose, running with cold, with the back of her hand. She had stitched up her injured lip like a burst seam, the thread black as insects against her mouth, and she could not help but worry their ridges with her tongue. She returned to the laundry, then, though the water had long since gone cold.

* * *

_Boston, 1785_

March had brought with it sharp winds from the north; while the last dredges of winter were carried along the back of the wind, Boston flourished now that the thaw had set in, and the city was full and bright with noise. Boston had swelled and spread since the end of the revolution, becoming a mixing pot of all races and creeds, and now that the taxes had been lifted, all were in good spirits. The sun beat down tirelessly; before the winds, the springtime had brought incessant rains that clutched at the east coast, and now the wet streets steamed and the slate roofs gleamed, birdsong rising from the hills as the entire world came alive again. The winter had been long and difficult for everyone, especially those in the cities; grain was scarce and bread expensive to buy, forcing many families to live off scraps and whatever else they could scrounge.

There was a naïve part of Connor that he could never quite train into submission: a part that dreamed of peace and prosperity following the end of the Crown’s tyranny, a part that dreamed of freedom for his people and the ability to live in harmony with the white folk. Such things were foolish dreams, he knew that, he had _learned_ such things through experience; but nothing had changed the way he hoped. His failures remained like open wounds; he should have done better. He should have done _more_.

But it was over, now. All he could do – all any of them could do – was look to the future.

A bureau for the Colonial Brotherhood had been set up in the heart of Boston and New York under Connor’s tutelage. The Assassins’ strength had swelled in the months following the evacuation of the redcoats, and what with Washington’s sturdy support they were met with little resistance; the Templar presence in the colonies fell apart after Haytham’s death and the Assassins made quick work of whatever foxholes they had left, rooting them out like vermin. There was no joy in such things for him, but it was a task that must be done.

The streets of Boston grew hot by mid-morning, cloying in their humidity and pungency, and he grew restless; he would need to leave soon if he was to make it back to the homestead before nightfall. He could make the trip to Boston and back in a day on his own and with a good steed, but there was no cause for haste, and the weather was fair enough for him to make good time. And, for as much as he disliked Boston’s narrow streets and clogged gutters, it still retained a very particular charm that even he was not impartial to.

Wind howled along the boulevard by the docks, chasing up ladies’ skirts and plucking the hats right from their heads; the brittle trees, the smallest green buds only just beginning to sprout, bent and snapped with the force of it. Voices rose louder than usual to be heard over the wind’s howling and Connor, consumed in thoughts of the jobs he still needed to do, careened directly into an oncoming pedestrian with all the force and grace of a charging bull.

He _heard_ the wind knocked from her lungs. Connor’s tools spilled from his arms onto the street, as did a many number of apples and a parcel wrapped in paper, which fell directly into a puddle of muck. Connor, paralyzed for only a moment by embarrassment, stooped to collect his tools, and crouched there on the street he glanced towards the spilled groceries to see a young woman hastily picking the parcel up and wiping it on the skirt of her dress, swearing something fierce. Her voice was quiet enough that none but Connor could hear, though seeing somebody dressed so neatly swear like one of Faulkner’s sailors was curious in its own right.

He helped her collect her escaped apples and place them back into the basket he had overturned, and she offered him something of a smile, though exasperated and tempered by a frown.

“I am sorry,” he told her frankly. “I was not watching myself.”

The woman peered at him for a short moment before touching her hand to her brow and shaking her head. As they stood fully, Connor was caught by her height: she was unnaturally tall for a woman, measuring only a few hands shorter than Connor himself. He was, too, struck by the blackness of her eyes, and he could scarcely tell pupil from iris even in the glare of the sun.

“Neither was I, it would appear,” she admitted. Immediately Connor knew she was no local, or at least had not been for long; her accent was not one he could place and seemed, at least to him, to speak of many places at once, as cryptic as a cipher. She shifted the load in her arms and took the last apple he offered her.

It was odd, standing at an impasse with this woman, who was dabbing gingerly at the underside of her parcel. She drew a deep breath, as though mustering her courage, and looked up at him, squinting against the sun and smiling. Her teeth were white and very straight.

“Thank you,” she said eventually after a few long moments of silence. “And good day to you, sir.” With a tip of her hat, she stepped around him and vanished into the crowd. Connor blinked at the place she had just been, yanked from the daze he had fallen into. There was something troubling about that face. Something he felt he should recognize; no matter how much he dwelled on it, however, it eluded him.

The rest of his errands were finished quickly after that, and after organizing an envoy to collect the lumber from his mills, he headed back to the hitching station and loaded his fare into the saddlebags. His horse whickered happily against his hand when he reached out to stroke her nose, offering her a lump of sugar from his pocket. Both he and his mount – who had stood sweating beneath the thatched roof for many more hours than she would have liked – were both glad to be free of those choked city streets.

He arrived at the homestead a few hours after nightfall that day, having ridden hard from Boston with few rests along the way. His horse, thoroughly exhausted yet strong in spirit, was glad to return to her stable. Connor delivered the tools he promised Terry to his house, and delivered Ellen’s spools to hers, as well as all the other little trinkets he had agreed to pick up. It was a happy task – after all, these people were his family and did not get the chance to travel into the city as often as he did.

As true darkness descended and the trilling woodland fell quiet, Connor finally returned to the cool silence of the manor. Many, he knew, would dislike living alone in such a place, enormous and filled with shadows, but Connor found it to be something of a sanctuary. Nothing could get to him here. Enveloped in the manor’s walls, hidden below in the cool darkness of the cellar, was where he felt the most protected. The quiet held him steady.

The water left in the pitcher from that morning had grown lukewarm, but Connor splashed it over his face and neck all the same, scrubbing his hands clean again; only then was he able to retire to the solace of his sitting-room, where he sat upon Achilles’s great chair and stretched out his legs towards the grate. The hearth remained unlit even despite the nip of the springtime evenings; it was too much of a bother to maintain fires in all parts of the house, and given that Connor lived alone, he deemed it entirely unnecessary.

As he sat, he turned his notice towards the aching in his muscles. He’d grown so tired over this last winter. Perhaps he was just getting old, and yet there was something gnawing at his bones and his spirit that he couldn’t assuage, no matter how he tried. He spent days alone in the deep woods of the frontier, making an effort to grow closer to the homestead’s residents, going so far as to spend his afternoons with the children – but nothing worked. He wasn’t sure what had caused it, whether it was the weather or his age or the ever-growing responsibilities of his rank, and try as he might to push it to the back of his consciousness, it always rose to the surface.

He retired early that night and deigned to think of it no more.


	2. Chapter 2

_London, January 1776_

She had heard of it, of course. Everybody had, at least in London; first it was a rumor, and then it became subtitles in the papers, and then it was inevitable. War, revolution: all were far-off things, an exotic dream across the sea, though to others it was heresy against the crown and against the king.

The summer of 1775 had been wet and cloying. The rains sluiced across the country yet did nothing to abate the heat, and tempers wore thin as the colonists became more discontent than ever before. Marie, though showing no ostensible interest in such matters, listened. She listened, and she learned of many things, of taxes and Acts and a divide between the kingdom and its people that nobody had really foreseen.

“They don’t understand what it’s like,” a gentleman called over the wind one day upon the boulevards by the Thames. Marie was but a small distance away, invisible in the shadow of a stoop, as still and silent as the shadow itself. “It’s nothing like England, nor all of Europe. The king doesn’t understand it, Parliament doesn’t understand it, the taxmen don’t understand it. It’ll be their undoing, mark my words. They don’t know anything about the Americans, and there’s danger in that.”

It was an omen, she knew, black and ominous. Yet within her sympathy began to grow. Distracted, she wandered back through the narrow streets, watching as they became filled more and more with filth, with undesirables, until she was once again deep in the blackest bowels of the city. She thought and thought, and remember how she had felt in the wintertime; how it felt to be powerless, to be cut down and beaten for something you could not provide.

“It will not affect us either way,” her father told her later that evening, when she broached the subject with him. He had been gone for days to Brighton in search of work, but had come back unsuccessful, as was usual. “The Americans have very little hope against the king’s army. Let us be selfish in this.”

She peered at him through the half-light, perplexes. “Are we not hopeless as well, you and I? If there was someone who might help us – who might set us free – what would you think if they were to be selfish and let us rot?”

He glared at her, tightly, from over the rims of his spectacles.

The summer passed in droves of rain. The streets reeked with filth and the Thames steamed; the undesirable rows grew unbearably hot and full of mold, children screaming and tempers going unchecked. Marie was consumed with hatred for all of it. The heat fettered all of them, utterly inescapable, and the rain permeated everything.

Marie’s mood was changed, but she would not speak of it, no matter how much she was pressed. Not to Yvonne, not to Victor, not to her father. She spent less time at home and more time wandering the street, or chatting with the night ladies down the way.

And then the wintertime came, and only when the first snow came did they witness how deeply Marie was affected; the snow became a fear, and the nighttime she sought to dispel with all manner of candles and lamps, yet the shadows remained long and the darkness remained impenetrable, torturous, the air choked with tallow. She was riddled with fear as deeply as any disease.

“I seen somethin’ like you in Emily,” one of the night ladies told her, once, on a gloomy evening. She lounged against a wall, and from her seat in the gutter Marie could see a long, pale leg as it was caught by the moonlight. “You remember her, don’t ya?”

Marie remembered. Emily was one of the working girls who’d hung herself last September.

“She was scared like you.”

Marie licked her teeth. She didn’t like that implication. She didn’t like it at all. She did not reply, and the woman smiled at her, catlike.

It was buried. She worked until her hands grew bloody. She drank her gin when her distress grew a little too much, administering it like medicine. Whatever meagre earnings she made were spent on it. The others were too busy with their own problems to notice it, or to notice her. She preferred it that way.

Only after Christmastime could she stomach the sight of herself again, and she peered at herself in the seeing-glass by the lamplight for the first time in many months, barely recognizing the girl she saw there. Her mouth had scarred over, the mark pink and angry and distorting her lip just a little, but her eyes were the worst part. Dark and tired. Her mother’s eyes.

* * *

_Davenport Homestead, 1785_

There was an eagle that nested upon the manor’s roof in the springtime. It hadn’t always been there, and Connor couldn’t quite remember when it decided to make the manor its home, but to see it wheeling overhead in the high afternoons of March felt as natural as the breeze; a few years after it first appeared Connor climbed onto the roof to see the nest himself, and found a great whorl of twigs and bits of wool coiled together around two chicks, whose plumage was dark and downy. He remembered the gold of their eyes and the pink of their throats as their mother glided over the forest and the lake, her feathers gleaming against the sun. He sat on that roof for a while, beside the nest, and when the eagle returned to her children she merely perched on the chimney-cap and peered at him. Unthreatened. It was a fond memory.

It was these two eagle chicks – now fully-grown and with brilliant plumage of white and brown – that wheeled beneath the sun, their shrieking calls echoing across the hills. They dove down into the trees, flitting amongst the canopy like shadows, chasing the white coat-tails of a man leaping between the boughs; when gunshots alighted the forest, however, they shot back into the sky in fright.

Connor had risen before dawn wrought with restlessness that refused to settle. His dreams had been plagued with all manner of mysterious things, of gleaming gold veins and omens he knew he ought to recognize. He dressed and left the manor in the darkness, plunging into the woods without so much as a whisper; it was as good a time as any to practice his tracking. The silence just before dawn, Connor thought, was always the most absolute. It was a time when the entire world seemed to lie asleep, hushed and unmoving, and he would sit awhile upon the earth and merely feel it breathe.

But as the towns of the frontier grew and inched ever closer to the homestead, Connor felt the world rest less often, always kept alive by the choke of coal-smoke and industry. The expansion had littered the surrounding lands with poachers that, at first, hadn’t been any more worrisome than picking off a flea every now and again – more recently, though, the hunters had come to these woods more often and in greater numbers. Connor would find trapped animals left to die, or carcasses left abandoned, or traps forgotten and left open for any wandering creature to stumble upon. They went from being a nuisance to being a danger.

And so, plagued as he was by unsettled nerves, Connor delved into the deep woods to hunt down the poachers he _knew_ were there. He’d seen the litter from their camp the day before, and supposed that their tracks would be easy enough to find in the snow.

They weren’t difficult to find.

The man they had put on guard sat snoring in his chair, his rifle resting across his knees. Their fire had burned to embers, now, little more than a warm glimmer amongst the ashes, and the rest of their party – five men, at most – were all sound asleep. Connor watched them from above, shrouded by the night and the branches; there was a pair of antlers nearby that had been viciously cut away from whatever unfortunate animal they had taken them from. He’d seen that animal – an old buck, enormous in size and with a long, wise face – laying abandoned near the trail leading north. A waste. It made fury coil tight in his gut.

The watchman was the first to be silenced. He toppled from his chair with little more than a gurgle, an arrow through his throat. Connor, still from above, picked them off one by one, raising no more fuss than a few faint wheezes. It was the last of them - the head of the party, Connor could tell - he decided to string up from the tree overhanging their camp as a warning to any others who might decide to hunt for sport in those woods.

Connor took the antlers with him back to the homestead, making a note to send out some boys to dismantle the camp later that day, and by the time the manor came into view the sky had lightened and the first hazes of light began to whisper through the trees

Hauling the buck’s antlers up the steps to the house, he set about cleaning up. It was bloody work, and as the sun rose he sat out the back of the manor and scrubbed the dirt and blood from his robes, watching as the sea blazed with the sunrise. He fingered the threads in his lap, which had become threadbare; Ellen had offered to mend his clothes, which he gratefully accepted, but he refused to let her make another set for him. His robes felt a part of him, as much as his hair or his limbs. They held memories. They held his spirit.

And so life on the homestead went as it always had. Myriam and Norris had brought a daughter into the world just before Christmas and were happier than Connor had ever seen them; David and Ellen were engaged the summer before, much to Maria’s delight, for she loved David in place of the father who had forsaken her. Their community was thriving, and in it Connor could see a glimmer of the peace and harmony he once dreamed of.

It was late morning by the time Connor wandered down to the inn. He found Oliver offloading barrels of drink with his wife, both their faces pink with cold and sweating from the weight of their load. He ducked below the barrel Corrine was trying to lift from the wagon, taking the weight across his shoulders and heaving it up. Corrine puffed and put her hands to her back, stretching with a heavy sigh of relief.

“Connor,” she said. “You’re a savior.”

“You should have asked me to help,” he chastised gently. Oliver turned from him and trudged to the door; Connor knew he was too proud to ask for any more help. _You’ve done more than enough for us,_ he’d told Connor. _We won’t be takin’ anything else from you_.

“The delivery was late, anyway,” Oliver told him as they ferried the barrels to the inn’s storeroom. “Some nasty business in New York, I hear.”

“New York?” asked Connor. He hadn’t heard anything, which was strange considering he made a habit of knowing all the goings-on around the area. “Recently?”

“Aye. Something to do with all this talk of slaves, I hear; the coachman mentioned a riot. Here – he gave me this. I’ve not had time to read it.”

Oliver patted down his pockets and pulled forth a folded tabloid; he handed it to Connor, who unfolded it and read the front article quickly. Right there, in bold, unmissable print, read: TEMPERS IGNITED OVER FREEDOM OF NEGROS! Of course, such topics had been upon many lips for years, but ever since the British had been expelled, the emancipation of slaves had become a topic of interest to many, and had, as such, brought many sour attitudes to the forefront.

Connor frowned at the paper, and Oliver, reading his expression clearly, said, “Terrible business, really. Negros are fine folk, just look at Prudence and Warren! I’ve never met two more good-hearted people.” He chewed on his pipe and shook his head, tucking the paper into his pocket when Connor returned it to him.

As Connor and Oliver unloaded the wagon, Corrine stepped aside and, quite suddenly, caught sight of someone standing watching them. She wandered over to where Terry was waiting by the road, twisting his cap between his hands, and she wiped her hands on her apron.

“You look awful nervous,” she said, nodding to his hat. He shifted it behind his back. “Is something amiss?”

Terry shook his head and rocked to and fro on his heels. “No, no, nothin’ like that, see –,” He rubbed a hand across his head and sighed again, and Corrine knew that something was _definitely_ amiss. He took her elbow and led her a little farther down the road, lowing his voice until she had to lean in just to hear. “It’s Diana’s birthday, see. Three evening’s from now, an’ I know she don’t like celebratin’, but -,” here he glanced over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t overheard “- she’ll be forty this year an’ I want to do somethin’ nice.”

At the thought of a party Corrine’s face brightened and all fatigue seemed to vanish. She took Terry’s hands into hers and squeezed them. “Terry, of course we have to do something for her! Oh, we shall hold a party for her, of _course_ we will!”

“You mustn't tell nobody.”

“I won’t!” Corrine turned and cupped her hand to her mouth. “Ollie! We’re having a party!”

“Corrine –,”

Corrine half-dragged Terry to where Oliver and Connor were hitching the wagon. Oliver, upon seeing his wife’s face flushed with joy, frowned.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s all this party nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense, Ollie!” Terry jabbed her with his shoulder and her voice pitched to a low murmur, heads bent low in conspiration. “It’s Diana’s birthday in three days’ time. Forty years old, can you believe it! An’ Terry, bless his heart, he suggested we have a party for her. I say we have it here, in the inn.” Corrine looked to Oliver, who was stroking his chin in thought.

“I suppose,” he said eventually. “Three days, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“Could be good for business,” Oliver murmured. Corrine beamed.

“It’s settled, then! It’ll be a surprise party. We’ll invite the whole homestead – oh, Diana’ll love that! I’ll be sure to send word to Catherine. I hear she’s a wonderful baker.”

Connor glanced between the bright faces around him and said nothing until Corrine turned to him and asked, “You’ll be coming, won’t you, Connor?”

A pause passed between them, and all gazes settled upon his face, forcing Connor to bite back a shiver of discomfort. They were well aware of his nature, and how he had little love for parties or events. But Diana wasn’t just a _person_ , she was part of his family. They all were.

“Of course,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”


	3. Chapter 3

_London, February 1776_

She found the pamphlet in the gutter.

It was a slim thing, only fifty pages or so, and was bound in a fashion not typical of London. Fetching her father’s spectacles, her eyes lingered upon its face. She picked it up as an afterthought and brought it to where her father sat in the yard, his hat pulled low to shield the glare of the sun against the snow, smoking a pipe.

“I found this,” she told him when he took his spectacles from her nose. She held out the pamphlet so its front plate caught the sunlight; it was soggy, and some of its ink had bled, but it was legible enough. “I thought you might find it interesting.”

“I’ve already seen it,” her father replied. He removed his hat and Marie saw how gaunt his face had become, whittled away by poverty and stress. “It’s from America. An interesting read, if nothing else.” The snow was bright, freshly-fallen during the night and not yet set upon by many churning feet. Like this, the yard looked almost pretty, but Marie knew it was merely a matter of hours before the whole place was reduced to ankle-deep mud. “Apparently it’s quite popular. Oh, by the way, this came for you.” Marie was quite suddenly presented with a letter: it was neatly addressed, though battered from travel, and the hand was not one she recognized.

She sat beside him on the bench, and together they lingered, the air alight with caterwauling from the streets and rooms beyond. Above them, something shattered, followed by a woman’s shouting. Marie’s father glanced up, pressing his lips into a thin line, before he tried to ignore it. As the frozen eaves begun to melt, water dropped to the drifts below like the ticking of a clock; Marie did not hear it. She knew nothing outside the pamphlet that morning, for it ensnared her attention entirely, and only when she was met with the blank panel of its back did she regain any sense of awareness.

As they returned inside, their hands pinkened from the cold, her father took the pamphlet from her. “‘Common Sense’,” he mused. “Do you know what they say about common sense?”

Marie could not help but smile wryly. “What?”

Her father chuckled and removed his spectacles, tucking them into his pocket. “It is really not so common.”

Perhaps it all started with the pamphlet; looking back, Marie could never quite be sure. Empathy had been seeded long ago, but her allegiance to the chasing of freedom was cemented that morning. She knew not how, nor when, she would be able to aid such an impossible task: all she knew was that she needed to help them. She refused, however, to admit _why_.

The letter her father gave her was, indeed, hardly local. Much like the pamphlet, it was also from America, and had survived the journey across the Atlantic to arrive in her hands. Somehow it did not feel right to open it in the company of others, and so when she and her father parted, she returned to her rooms and sat by her window to read it. She was not familiar with the sender, nor his address, and discomfort was kindled in her belly.

_My esteemed mademoiselle,_ it read. Nobody had addressed Marie like that for years.

_I apologize for sending you this letter without forewarning; my acquaintance to your family has been a recent discovery and I felt I ought to make myself known to you, and to extend an invitation of my good-will. My name is John Bolton, and while this may mean very little to you – if anything at all – it appears that my father worked very closely with your mother during her sojourn in America, and I have reason to believe they kept correspondence for a long time after this. My father’s letters recently came into my possession, and from them I have learned a great deal, the details of which you may also find intriguing._

_I would very much like to meet you and discuss matters of business; I understand you are still young and quite far away indeed, but I believe the skills you have would be of great benefit to my enterprise (and you must not think of me as selfish, I beg you – for my endeavors encompass many others and are, I can assure you, noble in their goals). I would also like to introduce myself as a friend, for my father kept close only those who were of noble heart, and I have reason to believe that you are of this strain also. I shall wait eagerly for your reply, and while I shall not press you, I do wish to mention that time is of the essence._

_Yours faithfully,_

_J. Bolton_

No, no, the name meant nothing to her at all – she had never heard of Bolton, and she was too young to remember her mother ever mentioning him. She recalled the sounds and smells of the docks – putrid as they often were – and longed again to seek distant shores. How was it that both this letter and the pamphlet had come into her possession simultaneously? Perhaps they arrived on the same ship; postage was allotted as such, nowadays. And yet there seemed something odd about it, something driven by fate rather than by chance. Marie ground her teeth and worried the ear of the page between her fingers, watching through the grimy window as shadows flitted about the street below.

She could see the faint reflection of her face in the window, and upon meeting her own eyes, she knew there was but one way to escape

* * *

_Davenport Homestead, 1785_

The prospect of a party threw the homestead into raptures. Diana became suspicious of something, though was thankfully kept ignorant of their plans. Maria was perhaps most delighted of all – Ellen told the others how her daughter would sit up late into the night and, by nothing more than the light of a candle, would sew banners of bright colors for them to hang in the inn. Even Ellen and David’s wedding had been stalled in the lead-up to Diana’s birthday.

The weather, too, remained forgiving. Bright winter sunshine made the snow banks glow, and children ran screaming with laughter down the lanes and around the tree line, lobbing fistfuls of snow at one another. Spring was slowly waking beneath the snow, and Connor knew the thaw would come earlier this year.

“Thank you for your help, dear,” Corrine said as he helped her hang Maria’s banners. “Lord only knows you’re the tallest man on this here homestead. Got giant’s blood in you, I’d wager.”

Connor chuckled and stepped down off the chair he’d used to reach the rafter. A banner of pink and white fluttered in neat triangles above them. He’d never seen Corrine as happy as she was planning a party, and he found it rather charming. “Or perhaps you are just small.”

Corrine laughed and smacked him with her dishtowel. “The cheek! Go on, off with you.”

The air was fresh with rain from the night before and birdsong echoed about the hills. The eagles were sunning themselves upon the slates of the manor’s roof, and as Connor made his way back, he saw Diana and Catherine by the river with their feet in the water and skirts tied up around their hips, basking in the sunlight and chatting. Their children were there as well, frolicking about in the water and on the shaded bank.

In comparison to the rest of the homestead, the manor was oddly quiet. Its walls shut out the birds and the wind just as well as it shut out the sounds of laughing children and wagon wheels. It was lonely, in a strange kind of way. The house stood large and empty upon the knoll, even more now that Achilles was no longer there to occupy it. It was just Connor.

“You ought to get a dog,” Myriam had suggested to him once. “A nice big, furry one. A hunting dog, maybe – you could even get more than one. They’d be good company.”

But Connor didn’t want to confine dogs to the house, nor did he need any. He was perfectly capable of hunting on his own, and while dogs were certainly friendly animals, he didn’t quite feel prepared to deal with the mess.

Besides – he’d become used to being alone by now.

The day before Diana’s birthday party, however, Connor received an urgent message from Boston, delivered at dawn by a frantic rider. By his horse – which stood sweating and quivering at the foot of the road – Connor knew he had ridden hard and without pause. The rider bore a message from Samuel Adams, a man that Connor had not seen in many months and did not really expect to ever see again; he was busy with his work in Philadelphia and had little time to help the Brotherhood, though he and Connor remained friends and allies both.

_Connor,_ Adams wrote, _I hear I missed you in Boston. Undoubtedly you have heard of riots in New York concerning the abolition, but I have reason to think this was a deliberate act sparked by a third party. I implore you to ride to Boston as swiftly as you can lest something of a more insidious nature come to pass. Tempers grow volatile._

It was hastily written, Adams’s usually neat cursive little more than a scrawl. Clenching the parchment in his fist he turned to the messenger, who watched him closely, concerned.

“Rest here as long as you will,” Connor told him. “You have done well bringing this to me. I will make for Boston at once.”

There was no time to excuse himself; he saddled up one of his swiftest horses and was driving through the frontier within the hour. The letter itself was not worded with urgency, but Connor knew that if Adams himself had chosen to pen and send such a hastily-written letter then something was deeply amiss. Adams had his own concerns to attend to and rarely required such haste, least of all from Connor, who he knew was entirely capable.

He rode into Boston that afternoon, urging his mount on until he reached the entrance to the bureau. It was an unassuming building, indistinguishable from the townhouses on either side, and after slipping from his saddle he let himself in through the cellar entrance so as not to draw any undue attention.

“Connor, good, you’re here.” It was Sam Adams himself who greeted him, his face far more worn and weathered that Connor recalled from his youth; the war had been hard on him, though his eyes smiled and he shook Connor’s hand firmly. “I’m sorry to call you so suddenly.”

“What is this about?” he asked, never one to bother with formalities. Adams, he knew, appreciated this. “I have seen the headlines that speak of New York and the discontent there.”

Adams led him through the dimly-lit rooms, filled with books and maps and some of Franklin’s more useful inventions; other recruits slipped amongst the shadows, soundless as cats, engrossed enough in their own work that they paid little heed to Connor. The few that did recognize him nodded politely and did not interrupt.

“The discussion around the emancipation of slaves has been well-controlled thus far; this is the first instance of such a riot having broken out. We have reason to believe that this is not merely happenstance,” Adams continued. “As I said, this has all been a rather recent discovery, which is what concerns me the most.” He reached out, pushing open the door to his study, and held it aside for Connor to enter. “Drink?”

Connor declined, choosing instead to sit in one of the chairs at Adams’s desk. He could not afford to let bourbon addle his awareness. “Keep going.”

Adams took a drink from his tumbler before sitting down across the desk and folding his hands over his belly. “Our efforts in New York have been steady and successful, in no small part thanks to you. We have ears to the ground in all places and very little goes on in that city without us knowing about it. We have taken particular interest in the conversation surrounding the slave trade, and Santiago has found reason to think that this riot was deliberately staged in order to cover up something else.”

Camila Santiago was the woman Connor assigned to lead the New York Bureau at the end of 1783. She had moved to America from the West Indies as a teenager, and she had a spirit as bright and passionate as the sun. It had been Adams himself that found her in the first place after she’d beaten off five men single-handedly and with no weapon after they cornered her in an alleyway. He had been so impressed by her, in fact, that he had taken her directly to Connor and recommended she be initiated. Santiago, destitute and hopeless and angry, had accepted. She took to the cause of the Brotherhood like a flame to kindling and Connor trusted her almost as much as he trusted himself. Many of the men, however, did not like her – they found her brash and outspoken, but Connor recognized it was merely prejudice that fueled them, and did not concern himself with their complaints. Those who knew Santiago understood her, and that was all that mattered.

“Why was this discovered only recently?”

“Because the perpetrators are deceitful and, apparently, very clever in their subterfuge. Santiago only got her hands on one of their letters a day or two ago after one of her scouts went missing, and we have reason to believe that someone – or more than _one_ – has been stoking anti-abolition sentiment in order to cause such an incident.. Santiago is inclined to agree. She sent a copy.” Producing a letter from a drawer of the desk, Adams handed it to Connor.

_[…] It will root out the rot we are seeking. Chaos, as always, remains something of a smoke screen. Use this to your advantage and hold no quarter when you find them._

The letter was neither addressed nor signed, and there were parts that were unintelligible; Adams explained that the original copy was heavily damaged.

“We don’t know when it was sent,” Adams told him. “But we suspect that it refers to the riot in New York.”

“Was there no clue as to its sender? Or recipient, even? Surely we would have known if plans were circulating.”

Adams looked pained. “There was a wax seal, but it had been broken already by the time Santiago received it. It may have afforded us with a little more information, but it’s better than nothing.”

They sat in pensive silence for a number of minutes, thinking. It was evident that the sender of this letter had no quarrel with either side of the abolition argument; they sought only to provoke chaos and to use it as a _smoke screen_. The question that remained was what, exactly, they were trying to hide.

Connor turned the letter over in his hands. It was written on fine paper, thick and silky to the touch, but plain. The penmanship was also of a high quality, as was the ink and the pen used to write it, speaking of influence and, most likely, money. Such things were of little use to them, however; abolition concerned both the rich and the poor.

There was very little to do other than wait for more evidence to surface, though Adams’s concerns were settled a little by Connor’s presence. “I believe in you wholly, Connor,” he said, clapping Connor on the shoulder and shaking his hand once more. “I hate to depart so suddenly, but I am needed in Virginia. I will keep my eyes open, though, and will comb my connections for any useful information.”

That evening, alone in the dim light of his own study, he penned a letter to Santiago. He had received no letters from her, but one of the clerks informed him that she’d spent most of her time scouring New York and its townships for any trace of tampering. Her scouts kept their eyes on the city, but nothing had come up.

 _We must wait,_ Adams had said before he left. _As much as I hate to admit it. So many things are waiting games, these days._

He did not sleep easy that night. The following day he lingered until mid-morning, but when no word came of strife, he deigned to return home; he still had pressing tasks there, what with administrative work that never seemed to end and the repairs to be done on the manor, and he had left much of his intel in the cellar. He itched to ride to New York, but he knew that Santiago was capable of handling things herself with all the brisk efficiency he could ask from her, and he hoped that the messenger he had sent to deliver his letter found no harm along the way.

Worry dogged him the whole way back to the homestead. His old wound – deep in his side, from the day he had confronted Lee inside the burning shipyard so many years ago – troubled him. By the time he arrived back at the homestead it was well past sundown, the trees dark and still, the moon heavy and shedding bright, unobscured light across the woodland. It cast mottled shadows that moved like creatures among the grass, and Connor’s horse gladly slowed to a trot as they descended the slope of the valley, the thudding of its hooves scarcely audible over the rush of the ocean beyond.

A glance at the moon told him that it was already late; the party, about which he had completely forgotten, would have begun hours ago. He was tired and sore and rife with worry, but it did not feel right to forgo his friends so entirely, and so he paused only briefly at the manor before diving once more into the night.

He arrived at the inn a little out of breath and still in his uniform, but the bright glow of the windows and the din of the party from inside lifted his spirits immediately.

“It’s Connor!” Godfrey cried, raising his tankard in greeting as Connor let himself through the front door. The joyous faces of his friends turned to him, and the children all cried out in delight at his coming and threw themselves towards him. He greeted each of them in turn, laughing, before going to kiss Diana on her cheek and bestow upon her the gift he had brought from Boston.

“Oh, you dear boy!” Diana unwrapped her gift, beaming: it was a silver hair-pin with a shimmering garnet set at its head, cushioned in crepe paper. She uttered a gentle _oh_ before throwing her arms around Connor and almost bringing him to his knees with the force of her embrace. “Thank you so much, dear! I shall treasure it always.”

Oliver ushered Connor to a seat at the table, fixing him a plate of food from the spread, including a generous mug of ale. Norris, who had brought his fiddle, stood amongst the children as they danced to his tune. Even the unfamiliar faces of travelers were merry, and they sang along to Norris’s songs and wished Diana well for the next year. The singing from inside the Mile’s End grew, accompanied by rancorous laughter and stamping feet, sending everybody into wonderful spirits. Even Father Timothy was there, though he did not linger long, saying that he found the festivities a little overwhelming.

In the festivities nobody noticed the hammering at the door. It was only by chance that it was eventually heard at all, for David and Ellen stood by the door as they watched Maria dancing on Warren’s toes, drinking and laughing and murmuring sweet things in one another’s ears. Ellen, her hearing sharp as ever, turned and peered out the window when she heard the knocking. The door was not locked – there was no reason to hammer so.

It was David who answered the door, curious as to who it could be this time of night, and what could spur them to such urgency; when he opened the door he came face-to-face with a woman, doubled over and smeared with mud all across her waist and her bodice and her face. Her hands were wet with it, and she was shaking with cold.

“I am terribly sorry,” she managed between clenched teeth. Her breath wheezed, the sound worryingly wet. “I –,” Her hand moved to clutch at the door frame, and upon the white paint David saw that she was covered not in mud, but in blood.

The others, alerted to the disturbance by the door, grew quiet and peered towards where David stood, the bulk of his body hiding whoever had come to the door.

A heartbeat of near-silence passed as Norris’s fiddle music died, broken only when Ellen shrieked. Everything seemed to move very fast after that.

A ripple passed through the room and those around the table leapt to their feet. David staggered back, and when he turned they saw that he held a body in his arms, pale and as limp as a corpse.

“Lyle – !” David hollered, breaking the glaze of surprise that had fallen over them. All the festivities lay forgotten as the party-goers vaulted from the table; Prudence and Catherine gathered the children away, and with Diana they moved them upstairs and away from the ruckus. Lyle was the first to reach the door, though was followed closely by the others.

“Space, I need space!” he barked at them. David lowered the woman – who was lapsing in and out of consciousness – to the ground and lay her on her back, prying away her hands, which clutched at her side. Her skin was sticky with blood. He took his spectacles from his pocket and inspected the blood-soaked fabric, tugging at the fringes of it and swatting David back so he could shed light upon the wound.

“I apologize –,” the woman wheezed through her chattering teeth, and as a lamp was brought to Lyle he saw that she was sweating profusely.

“Hush, now,” he said. “No talking.” He turned to Diana, who had returned to help the doctor where she could. “There’s a musket ball in there,” he told her. “Not too far, though, I don’t think. Something to be said for all the clobber you ladies wear.”

Had there not been a woman bleeding out on the floor, Diana would have smacked him.

“Connor,” Lyle called. “Come help me move her to one of the rooms. We’d best get this out as soon as we can.”

Connor moved forwards, but before he could take more than a few steps the woman let out a shuddering gasp, her eyes leaping open, pupils enormous and black. “No, no, my father, he –,”

Her eyes. Connor knew her eyes – only once before had he seen eyes so black and depthless. He glanced over her face, the familiar angle of her jaw and the stern set of her forehead, and he checked the length of her body against the other women. He had met her before.

“Easy, now, love.” Diana took the woman’s hand and smoothed the hair back from her face. “We’ll get you all fixed up in no time.” She turned to Terry and Godfrey, both of whom were now suitably sobered. “Go and look outside, see if there’s anyone else.”

The two men ambled out of the doorway. Terry unhooked the lantern from behind the door, holding it aloft as they ventured out toward the road. It was there they found a horse of magnificent size, glistening with sweat and standing upon shaking legs. It wore no saddle and no bridle, and upon its back sat a man with the horse’s mane clutched tightly in his hands; Terry and Godfrey drew closer, their steps measured with caution.

“Hullo?” Godfrey said. “Sir?”

When there was no response, he reached out and touched his hand to the man’s leg, causing a pallid face to turn in their direction. Without a single word, the man slid from the horse and landed in the dirt with all the grace of a sack of bricks.

“Doc!” Godfrey hollered as Terry thrust the lantern at him, going to crouch down by the collapsed man and feel for a pulse. “We got another one out here!”

“Go,” Lyle told Diana. “Connor and I will take her upstairs. Have Godfrey and Terry bring up the other, if by God’s grace they are still alive.”

Diana, her heart pounding, hurried outside to where her husband knelt beside the body. She felt for a pulse, checked the man’s temperature, and loosened his neck kerchief; he still seemed to be breathing. She crossed herself.

“Bring him upstairs,” she told the men, taking the lantern from them. “Come now, quickly!”

Inside the inn, Lyle and Connor set about carrying the woman up the stairs and to one of the bedrooms. They raised her gingerly, her body sagging between them, Lyle lifting her legs and Connor supporting her beneath the arms. They employed Warren’s help to support her waist and make sure the shot did not go any deeper. Her head rolled against Connor’s chest, eyes closed, now fully unconscious.

“Pray she remains so,” Lyle muttered. “Or else bring something for her to bite down on.”

Together they brought her to one of the rooms, already lit and aired by Catherine, who stood on the landing wringing her hands. “She don’t look so promisin’,” she murmured to Warren, who stood beside her.

Warren gazed after them. “I say Dr. White is a mighty good doctor,” he replied. “She got a good chance yet.”

Nobody knew where the man and the woman had come from. In the light of the bedroom it became clear just how close to death the girl had danced - her skin had lost its color, her lips pale as a corpse. Lyle pored over her and shooed everyone from the room except Diana, who he assigned to the man’s care.

“A blow to the back of the head,” she told Lyle. “No obvious damage, but there’s no way of tellin’ if there’s concussion until he wakes up. For now it seems he’s just in shock. Nothing a bit of brandy and a warm bed won’t fix.”

The woman, however, was in much worse shape. She’d been shot, and while the musket ball had missed anything vital, it was lodged stubbornly in her abdomen. Once Diana made sure the man was comfortable, she moved over to the bed, which had been laid out with canvas to stop the blood from staining. Together they carefully extracted the musket ball, Diana soothing the girl whenever she stirred or let out low, pained moans. Diana gave her a finger of gin to settle her. Lyle mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief, eyes straining in the lamplight.

“Not the best way to end a party,” he murmured, and Diana chuckled.

“Such is life,” she replied. “At least _I_ wasn’t shot.”

The night grew later, and the children began to nod off; Prudence, Catherine, and their husbands excused themselves to take the sleeping children home, and slowly the others also left the inn, leaving their apologies to Diana as they did. Strangers murmured and speculated until they were run off by Corrine, and soon it was only her, Connor, and Oliver left, aside from Lyle and Diana, who were still tending to the woman upstairs.

“Don’t feel like you need to stay, dear,” Corrine told him. “You must be tired.”

Connor looked uneasily towards the stairs and considered returning to the manor for the night. “No,” he replied eventually. “I will stay.”

He took station at one of the tables by the stairs, and Corrine brought him a drink – hot, this time, and without the alcohol – to tide him over until he decided to leave. With that, she and Oliver retired, and by the slant of the moon Connor knew it was well into the small hours of the morning. But he had endured worse than this, and curiosity kept him wakeful, his eyes wandering to the landing above, where he could hear the occasional moan of pain.

The woman was familiar to him. He had met her in Boston that day when the wind seemed alive, shrieking over the mountains and in from the sea. He could recall her face so clearly: the darkness of her eyes and the gleaming of her teeth when she smiled, the severity of her features, the strange nature of them. What on earth had happened between then and now? What strife had befallen her? Questions whirled, dreadful and pressing, in his throat. She did not seem like a person disposed to trouble, nor to getting shot – he thought of the poachers he had accosted upon his return from the city, and of when he first met Myriam; her arm had been shot through by such men. Maybe the same misfortune had befallen these strangers, too.

Eventually Lyle leaned over the bannister. “You’re still here?”

Connor rose from his seat. When Lyle beckoned to him, he ascended the stairs and approached the open door with near-soundless footsteps.

“Stable, for now,” Lyle told him. Diana finished rolling up her tools, storing them in the bag that had been brought for them earlier. She joined them on the landing, her face flushed bright with the excitement and exertion of the evening.

“Did you find out what happened?”

“Not a word,” Diana said. “Neither woke, not the whole time.”

Connor leaned around Diana and peered through the doorway. The room had been dimmed and cleared of whatever mess was there before, and from the landing he could see the woman in a bed, her face turned to the side, hands unmoving over her belly. In the lamplight her hair was like a flame, and she appeared to him as pallid and ghostly as a cadaver only freshly departed.

“Will they be all right?” he asked them. “Is it safe to leave them alone?”

Lyle sighed heavily and put his hands on his waist. “It’s hard to say. I’ll check in on them throughout the night, but they appear to be stable.” He looked over his shoulder. “Very curious.”

After bidding Lyle goodnight, Connor and Diana finally left the inn. “I am sorry that the evening was interrupted like that.”

Diana smiled kindly at him and laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t you apologize, Connor. There was no tellin’.”

He saw her back to her house, making sure she made it safely inside before making his way to the manor. He paused upon passing the inn again, reminded quite suddenly of the horse still standing beside it, grazing contentedly at the grass. He approached it, slowly, one hand held aloft. Upon realizing his presence, the horse raised its head and looked at him, unafraid. The closer he drew the more he saw just how enormous it was; the horse blinked at him, moving forward with no small measure of caution, tail flicking. Up close like this – even in the darkness – the horse’s coat gleamed, and he could see each long eyelash, the bright slash of white on its forehead, the velveteen sheen of its muzzle; as though it realized Connor’s gentle intent, it nosed at his hand, hot breath huffing against his palm.

It was a mare. A tall, proud mare unbefitting of its riders, as panicked and bloody as they were, her breath clouding in the cold air. He murmured to it.

Connor knew how to talk to animals. Not, perhaps, with words or language as he would with other humans, but there were ways of moving and breathing he had learned when he was very young. Ways of talking that used no words, that the men of the New World were unaware of. The mare followed him contentedly as he led her to his stables. She whickered nervously around the unfamiliar animals, but her fatigue and thirst finally won over, and she settled comfortably into one of the stalls.

He had been more tired than he’d realized, it seemed. Once he came to a stop in his bedroom his bones began to ache, and tiredness weighed against his eyes. He undressed in a daze before putting himself to bed. His sleep that night was black and lit with fire.


	4. Chapter 4

_London, March 1776_

It did not take long for John Bolton’s allegiance to make itself clear.

Marie, despite her aptitude for occasional mischief, was not a fool. She knew upon reading his first letter that he was a revolutionary, though his nature remained unclear; it was dangerous for both of them to exchange letters through such a public channel, but there was little other choice, and so he remained cryptic. Marie, however, was well-disposed to decipher such things. He had a number of contacts within Europe, mostly within England and France, though they appeared to be faint; he confessed to her that outside of a few select Frenchmen (whom he would not name, but of whom Marie already had her suspicions) she was one of his strongest leads in England, and that he had faith in the bond of their birthrights.

There was a certain excitement in the tasks he requested of her. He knew that her father had specific connections following the French-Indian War, and seemed to be unbothered by her confessed poverty; she admitted that things had not always been so, but that they had been made destitute when their home was destroyed many years ago. Bolton didn’t seem to mind that. In fact, he treated it as a mere inconvenience.

Living in London’s most despicable rows did lend itself to usefulness, at times; Marie knew ways of persuasion, picking pockets, picking locks, and various other matters of subterfuge. Disguises, she found, were her favorite. She could feign any manner, any accent, any class or foreign allegiance. The working girls were always happy to help her – they knew things, and had a way of distracting men that drew eyes from Marie.

She had always known more than she should, but never before had she sought to do so; she learned of an officer’s wife, delayed at the port, who was due to attend a dinner-party the following night. It was a small matter of intercepting the letter, stealing a dress, and somehow managing to source a bath.

Upon the evening of the dinner-party, Marie – now dutifully disguised as an officer’s wife – sat among the gleaming red coattails and pearls, her hands tingling with how wildly different things were here. It was like another world; meats stewed in their juices, wine poured freely, and the light glinted off the polished surfaces of jewels and brass buttons.

Dinner was finished soon enough, and the men moved into the drawing-room to play cards, or smoke, or drink. The women took coffee before joining them sometime later. The room was dark and inconspicuous, full of shadow and cigar smoke, and by then enough wine had flowed that everybody’s minds had slowed to a pleasant, hazy amble.

It was easy, then, for Marie to slip away. Earlier that evening she’d begged the general’s wife for a tour of the house. The general’s wife had been more than happy to show off her opulent residence to Marie, who fawned and awed over every finely-carved banister and cashmere rug. It almost seemed too easy. The steps she’d taken to the general’s office were committed to her memory after only one round about the house, and the maids were busy in the kitchens and the bedrooms, cleaning up the meal and preparing the rooms for their guests. Marie did not see a single soul until she reached the general’s office door.

It was locked, naturally, but that was merely a matter of pulling her small book of picks from her pocket and slipping them in the keyhole; in a little while the lock gave way beneath her fingers and she eased the door open soundlessly, closing it once she was inside.

Adrenaline raced through her blood. She moved methodically, careful to memorize just how things were set out. She opened each drawer, checked each shelf, each folder and bound stack of papers, leafing through maps and bundled manuscripts. Encountering a locked safe-box hidden beneath a false bottom in the desk, she knew she had found her target.

The lock did not give so easily as the door. She struggled with it, straining to see in the dim light, and her heart very nearly leapt out of her throat when she heard the sudden approach of footsteps and voices. It was the general’s laugh – undoubtedly – and he was talking to someone, clearly quite drunk. Marie glanced at the window; it was too high, and to open it would take too long. Not seeing anything else for it, she ducked beneath the desk and willed her breathing to slow.

“Well I thought I’d – oh. I mustn’t have locked the door. What did you say, William? Speak up! My hearing’s not what it used to be!” The general advanced into the room and Marie’s heart quivered, quite ready to fail entirely. She clasped a hand over her mouth and remained as still as she could. He reached the desk, and she heard him pause.

“Aha! Here it is. I knew I’d left it in here.” Something heavy was lifted from the desk, and Marie knew it to be the half-empty bottle of bourbon the general kept there. “I told Brewer he ought to try some before he left for India –,”

Marie did not move until the door was once more closed and the general’s voice had faded entirely. Her heart still hammered, her skin damp with sweat. With shaking hands, she levered herself back to her feet, returning once more to the locked box. Only through discipline did she crack open that box, revealing a cache of drafts detailing the British Army’s itinerary in Connecticut and Virginia. They were rudimentary and not yet approved for action, but Marie copied them nonetheless, knowing that plans of such detail were rarely altered significantly. She tucked the documents back into their box, reset the lock, and slipped from the office without a trace. Though it was not in Bolton’s interests, she also slipped a heavy coin-purse into her dress, having found it tucked neatly at the back of a drawer.

“Are you quite all right, dear?” Mrs. Dunwich asked, finding Marie sitting on the stair, flushed. Marie’s nerves gave a shudder, but she only smiled and pressed a hand to her forehead.

“Quite all right, I assure you. I must have had too much wine.”

Mrs. Dunwich gave her a sympathetic smile and, offering her arm, led her back to the drawing-room. Marie’s notebook weighed secure in her pocket, heavy with the gravity of its secrets. Later, when she was once again safe in the dank building – so, so different from the one in which she had spent her evening – she poured the coins out into her lap, thinking of how she might be able to move her family from this place at last.

* * *

_Davenport Homestead, January 1785_

Connor slept into the late morning, which was strange given that he rose with the sun by force of habit; but then again, the night before had been long and stressed, so it was hardly a wonder.

He was woken to the sound of voices and knocking. The angle of sunlight felt wrong; only then did he realize the time and, throwing himself from the bed, pulled on whatever clothes he could find.

“Connor, good morning,” Lyle greeted him with a tip of his hat. “We just wanted to let you know that those poor souls from last night are awake, if you wanted to stop by.”

Connor’s tiredness was slaked almost entirely. He straightened up, glancing over their heads in the direction of the inn, and nodded. “Yes. I will come and speak with them soon.”

The two men bade him farewell and left him to dress properly and wash his face and hands; waking so late had set Connor on a strange rhythm that felt, to him, entirely unnatural. He pressed onwards down to the inn as soon as he was able, stopping only to check in on the new mare in his stable. She looked even more brilliant in the daylight, her coat a shade of shimmering beige that shone in the sun like gold.

The banners from Diana’s birthday celebration were still strung up when he arrived. Corrine was still tidying up from the night before, and she greeted Connor with a warm but nervous smile. “They’re just upstairs,” she told him with a nod to the landing. “Go on up.”

He did. He moved silently. Unnerved. The door stood ajar, and he pushed it open with more caution than was really needed; Lyle looked up when the hinges creaked and, seeing Connor, smiled and gestured him inside. Lyle led him towards one of the beds, in which the man sat, now propped up and awake, his head bound in a bandage. He looked haggard, and the color had not yet returned to his face, but his handshake was firm and his eyes were alert.

“George Morgan,” he introduced himself. “You’ll forgive me for not being on my feet. I’m neither quite so young nor so spritely as I once was.”

Connor took the chair Lyle offered, sitting by George’s bedside, leaning his elbows on his knees. He was eager to hear the man’s story – how had they come here? Where had they come from? How did they ever even end up in such a sorry state?

“I’ll leave you two to talk for a while,” Lyle told them. “The girl should be fine for the next few hours, but call me if you need to.” He left them, then, closing the door behind him as he left. George let out a hefty sigh.

“I’m terribly sorry for all of this,” he began. “It’s my understanding we caused quite a stir last night.”

Connor nodded, but his gaze was soft. “We do not often get gravely wounded women swooning upon the doorstep,” he agreed. “I would be interested to hear your story, if you are willing to tell it.”

George, however, merely grimaced. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much, my friend,” he said. “It was upon me quite suddenly, and the last I remember of it was –,” here he paused, his eyes darting away, brow furrowing as though he was carding through the haze of memories. “Fire. And – well, I think I might have been struck at some point.” He touched his fingers gingerly to the back of his head. “Yes, almost certainly. I’m not sure how we ended up here, or by which route we came, or how we are even alive at all.”

“Where did you come from?”

“New York, I suppose,” George replied. “Since it’s the last place I can remember being.” He glanced over to the woman in the bed and his features softened in both grief and affection. “Of course she dragged me out alive, the insufferable girl.”

Connor followed his gaze to the woman. Her skin was dewy with sweat, and Lyle had cleaned, dressed, and bound the wound in her side. Though there was no infection, it appeared she still suffered from fever.

 _New York._ Adams’s voice jumped to the forefront of his mind.

“Do you know anything of the riot?”

George, still quite bewildered, let out an uneasy laugh. “I really cannot tell you, sir. All I can recall is – fire. All around. But I cannot tell you much of that, either, for I am unsure if it was reality or merely a dream.”

“This riot was said to have been started by talk of abolition,” Connor tried. “You were set upon in your own home; could you have perhaps been targeted?”

George looked bewildered for only a moment before his expression grew stormy, and Connor knew he had touched upon something. “I don’t know of anyone who would do such a thing,” George told him. “My daughter and I are staunchly opposed to the notion of slavery in any form, and while we have never contributed directly to politics, we have – well, we try to be good folk. Fair folk. It’s only decent. We were in the company of negros often, but – why us? What use would our deaths be?”

Silence blanketed the room. It was a dark kind of silence, just as the conversation of death always was; George looked suitably troubled, in part from confusion and in part from fear.

It complicated things, invariably. Knowing that the Morgans were against slavery meant that this could have very well been an act of malice and nothing more. And yet George’s confusion was well-founded, and if it was true that he knew of nobody who would target them so specifically, then there remained room for doubt. George, too, was not at fault for his amnesia, nor his confusion, and Connor’s questioning stressed him quite clearly. Upon returning his attention to George, Connor found him gazing across the room at the woman in her bed, grief etched deeply into his face. “My daughter,” he supplied at Connor’s inquisitive glance. “Dr. White told me she was shot.” He swallowed. “Said she’d most likely survive, but…”

“Lyle is a very good doctor,” Connor assured him. “If he says she will survive then I see no reason why she shouldn’t.”

George was silent for a long while. “I wish I could help you more, Mister…?”

“Just Connor.”

“Connor, then. I’m afraid we may have to wait for my daughter to recover a little before we find out, however, for if anyone is to hold the answers then it will be her.” The look he gave Connor was crooked, then. Suspicious. “Pray, Connor, have we met before? I could swear I have seen your likeness.”

Connor, bristling, tore his eyes from the girl’s white face and rose from his seat, the floor creaking beneath his weight. “No,” he answered. “We have not met. You must rest for now. I promise everything will be resolved soon. You are safe here.”

George, obviously more than happy to abandon the conversation, sagged in relief. “Thank you.”

When Connor descended the stairs he found Corrine and Oliver standing by the bar with their heads bent together, talking in low voices. They looked up when he approached them, however, and their concern was written clearly upon their faces.

“We talked to Dr. White,” Corrine said. “He told us about the girl. A few weeks until she’s ready for travel, he said, longer if she don’t heal proper.” She glanced at her husband. “Ought we to keep them here? We… we’re charitable folk, I like to think, but ever since my sister lost her house in the fire…”

“We don’t have much coin for hospitality,” Oliver explained. “Enough to run this place and live comfortably, aye, but –,”

“I will take care of it,” Connor found himself saying without having really thought about it; his response almost took him aback, and Corrine stared at him in surprise. “If they may stay here, I will organize the expenses.”

Corrine and Oliver looked at each other, and something seemed to pass between them – some sort of mutual understanding that Connor could not quite decipher.

“All right, then,” Corrine said eventually, smiling heartily. “If you’re sure. You’ve never led us astray before.”

The early afternoon was brilliant and clear. Connor, still disgruntled by what George Morgan had told him, went to the stables to assess the condition of the mare. She appeared perfectly unharmed, and after a closer inspection he found no instance of any wound, which was curious given the condition of her riders. She was enormous – larger than even his most prized stallions, and her muscles were honed far beyond those of a stable-horse. She had the build of a war-mount, and the silvery scar etched deep upon her flank – as well as a number of old nicks along her legs – made Connor wonder just how a horse like this ended up in the possession of two such unassuming characters.

He clicked his tongue at her, stroking her nose and between her eyes. She pushed back against him, whickering. Friendly. He checked her teeth and her hooves to find them in perfect condition. She was obviously well-cared for.

Connor greatly desired to ride for New York immediately, but there was no way of telling when the girl would wake from her fever, and he wanted – _needed_ – to be here when she did. Part of him knew she had something to do with the letter they had found – though he knew not how, nor to what extent – and even if she knew very little, it was better than nothing at all. Santiago would be able to handle events for a few days, at the very least, and if circumstances were really so dire then they would send word to him and he could be in New York within the day.

He returned to the manor briefly and drew up another letter to Santiago, copying it for the Boston bureau as well, and sent it with one of his most fleet-footed messengers from Lexington. The suspicion that someone was intercepting their mail was great, and Connor did not dare risk it. He detailed the arrival of the Morgans in his letter, telling her what George had said, and that the girl had not woken yet. He excused his absence, though knew Santiago would be relieved; she’d longed to be independent for years, and had finally proved herself when she was promoted to the bureau leader.

After the boy rode out for the frontier, Connor returned to the mare in his stables. He did not make a habit of letting unfamiliar horses roam free in the stable yard, but the way she looked at him piqued his interest; it was nearly human in nature. She went along happily, occasionally nudging at the back of his head or nipping at his hair. Her eyes were bright and yellow and wildly clever; she looked at Connor as though she knew him, nodding her head and stamping her feet, pacing around him. He did not saddle her. He did not bridle her. He merely stood beneath the sun as she pranced around him, tossing her mane and preening. _A proud horse,_ he thought. _A horse knowing of its beauty._

As the horse rounded him for a third time, Connor reached out and placed his hand upon her neck, using his weight to swing up upon her back; despite her enormous size, however, she was fast as the wind, and as soon as he had mounted her she threw him off with a powerful buck of her flank. He hit the hard, frozen ground and felt the air punched from his lungs. The horse threw her head again and laughed at him in a way only horses could, and Connor picked himself up from the ground to try again.

She threw him the next time he tried to mount her, and the time after that. She would wheel around him, and just when he thought he understood her movements, she would change them entirely. Connor, by right of his nature, did not concede defeat easily.

“You win,” he told her as he lay on his back once more, staring up at the sky as the cold seeped through his clothes. The horse stopped by his head and leaned down to send her hot, puffing breath across his face. She bit at his hair and he stroked her nose. _What spirit_.

He brought her back to her stall and stroked her strong neck once more before retiring to the manor, meaning to start on the repairs before the sun began to sink. It took concentration to balance, and he found it hard to keep his mind tracked on the task at hand. There was so much else going on – administration, the business in Boston and New York, the general unease that had settled across the land ever since the conclusion of the war, the financial strain, the expansion of the Brotherhood down towards Florida and further inland, George Morgan and his daughter –

He thought of George Morgan, with his greying hair and strong build, of his crisp voice and the words he had said.

_Fire._

Connor shivered as flames leapt unbidden into his mind’s eye. He hated fire, always had, ever since his village had been put to the torch. His beginning had been forged in it, and in it his quest for vengeance had, in a sense, been brought to an end. In his distraction the hammer slid from his grasp and landed in the dirt two stories below, drawing him forth from the hazy memories of the burning ship carcass; Connor stared after it, unsure what to think. He wished the girl would wake up and give him answers – he knew, somehow, that whatever had happened to them was connected to the letter Santiago found. All that was left was to find out how.

It was a few days until the girl passed back into consciousness again. By that point her father had been deemed fit by Lyle to move about, and although his head was still tender where it had been struck, he seemed none the worse for wear. He was not particularly tall in stature, but was built strongly and seemed more than eager to help wherever he could, and Connor soon learned of his extensive education and knowledge of geology and ecology, as well as his time spent with the British Army before the war; he learned, too, that George had been a schoolteacher in New York before their flight to the homestead, and taught the impoverished children who could otherwise not afford education. Upon learning of the plague of illiteracy around the homestead, George tentatively offered to take the time to teach them – this was something they readily accepted, as they did not have the money nor the time to spend on outsourcing, and Connor was called away so often he never had the opportunity to do it himself. Even Father Timothy was too busy these days to teach such things, nor was he particularly fond of teaching the homestead’s boisterous children, and he gave his blessing to George in his endeavor. Yet no matter how busy his days became George always made time to visit his daughter, sitting by her bed for hours at a time, talking softly to her, or reading aloud, as though she could hear him. Connor wondered if she could.

Organizing their boarding in the inn was hardly a difficult affair; their homestead had been prosperous that year, mostly thanks to good luck and a plentiful harvest as well as rich game in the woodland surrounds. He had the money to spare, and it wasn’t often this sort of thing happened. There was something sympathetic in him, too, that pushed him into providing lenience he wouldn’t otherwise give. It was that sympathy, compounded with George’s uncanny knowledge and the girl’s gunshot wound, that allowed them to stay.

Connor soon learned that the woman’s name was Bethany Morgan, and that she had no siblings; George begrudgingly told him that his wife – Bethany’s mother – had perished in a house fire when the girl was young, and since then they had travelled the world together without regard for any sort of permanency.

He watched, curious as he ever was, as George made quick friends with the homestead. He had a dry, clever sort of wit to him, and was not shy – he respected everybody, and what Connor found most interesting was the way he respected the land, finding wonder in the old trees that stood higher than any steeple, and just as thick. He would lay his hand against their trunks and gaze skyward to their canopies, eyes wide, and expressed a deep interest in the native taxonomy and ecology. George spoke bitingly of Boston’s expansion, though he understood its necessity, and would sometimes complain of the coal-smoke. To see such regard for the earth and her creatures was not a common thing in the white folk.

“To be nestled here in the quiet,” he said to Connor some days later, “and amongst such wild land… it brings a freedom to me that the city never did.”

A few days after things finally seemed to settle, Bethany Morgan woke up.

Connor received the news around dawn. He had told Lyle to inform him if she woke up no matter what time it was, and so he sent one of the boys skittering up the hill to the manor, pounding at Connor’s door red-faced and out of breath.

“Is something wrong?” Connor asked, coming around the side of the manor, his whetstone still in his hand. Seeing him awake so early was hardly a surprise to anybody. The boy told him that the woman – Miss Morgan, he said, young cheeks flushed – had woken up during the night, and that Corrine had found her conscious a few hours later.

Connor didn’t worry about his whetstone in the snow or the oil on his hands. Corrine was already waiting for him, and when he arrived, she ushered him through.

Lyle was there, of course, but aside from Oliver standing uneasily by the stairs, there was scarcely anybody else about. They talked in quiet voices so they didn’t wake the other patrons.

“Sensible enough not to try and get up,” Lyle muttered. “I’m sorry for rousing you so early, Connor.”

Connor waved off his apology. “It is no worry. I was up anyway.” He glanced towards the door. It was closed. “May I speak with her?”

“Aye. Her father’s in there, be warned. I wasn’t sure how much time I ought to give them.”

Connor paused and considered returning another time. But sympathy, he knew, must be forgotten in the face of necessity. And so, gingerly, he let himself in with a gentle knock.

He hadn’t been sure what to expect. The girl had lapsed in and out of consciousness for the last few days, never quite awake enough to pass beyond dreaming, but she had just enough awareness to take water when it was offered. Her fever had risen and stayed high to the point where Lyle became unsure it would turn, but it did, allowing her peaceful sleep until her constitution recovered. And now she sat in her bed, propped up upon her pillows, talking to her father. George sat beside her and was holding her hands in his. She appeared to Connor as a ghost, or a spirit; her eyes were bright and wild, her hair vibrant with color and her face devoid of it. For the briefest of moments, she did not look human to him.

She met his eyes and fell silent. George, alerted by her sudden distraction, followed her gaze to see Connor standing in the doorway. He said something. Connor didn’t know what. He wasn’t listening.

Her face tightened at the sight of him and he knew, immediately, that she recognized him.

“Connor, this is Miss Morgan,” Lyle introduced her as he stepped into the room. “Miss Morgan, this is Connor, the keeper of this community.” He sent a rueful glance at Connor; Lyle knew how much he hated being named owner of the homestead or the land, for Connor believed that the land ought not to be owned by anybody, but it was difficult to explain such things to strangers.

Bethany held Connor’s gaze, nodding to him politely, her face gaunt and starved of color. “We are acquainted, I believe.”

Lyle looked between them, his brow wrinkled in surprise. Even George looked startled.

“We ran into one another in Boston,” she explained. Her voice was smooth and deep; not quite enough to be masculine, perhaps, but enough that it did not sound entirely womanly, and aroused further surprise. “A pure coincidence.”

“Well I’ll be,” Lyle said. “Saves me the job of introductions, I suppose.” He glanced at Connor and shifted his weight from foot to foot. He knew how urgent this was to Connor, and was waiting for him to give the signal.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. His tongue was leaden in his mouth and refused to move.

“Thank you,” Bethany said, her voice quiet but sincere. It sounded strong, albeit raspy from disuse. She was healing. “For what you’ve done for us. It’s been a very long while since we have been afforded such kindness.” Turning to her father, she added dryly, “I hope you’ve been nice to them.”

George laughed and squeezed her hand. “You know I have,” he promised her. And then she smiled a very small, very soft kind of smile, and Connor suddenly felt out of place.

“When you are feeling a little better, I would like to talk to you, if you are able,” he said.

“Of course,” she replied. “The moment I am on my feet again, rest assured I shall help you however I can.”

Connor had not been confused many times in his life. By virtue of his upbringing and his training he had always been observant and intuitive, and was able to read situations and circumstances for what they were. Now, however, his senses felt wrapped in cotton wool. He looked between George and his daughter, raised his hands uselessly from his side, and excused himself from the room.

On the landing, Lyle turned to him and said, “What was that all about?”

“What was what all about?”

Achilles would have hit him around the knees for that. Lyle, however, merely folded his arms and jerked his head towards the door. “ _That_. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

Connor shook his head. “Nothing like that.” He said nothing more – what could he say? Those eyes were alive in a way he had never seen before, as though all the life in her body had been concentrated into them, and in the weak dawn light she truly seemed like a ghost, and Connor entertained the thought of saying _I did_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **NOTE:** Adjustments have been made to previous chapters concerning Marie's circumstances. It's likely this fic will undergo constant - hopefully minor - updates/changes in the future, just as a heads up :')

_London, July 1776_

Her father sighed, placing his paper down upon the table. He looked haggard; work once again eluded him, despite his thorough education and pleasant disposition. Their rooms, at least, were different – he did not question Marie’s funds beyond a pointed glower, willing enough to swallow his pride for the sake of escaping the decrepit old building. This one was hardly ideal, either, but was a good sight better; there were fewer draughts, and the air did not hold as much moisture. There was less rot and fewer rats to contend with, and the food was better.

“That was a mighty fine sigh,” she observed, glancing up at him before returning to her needlework. A baby began to wail somewhere beyond the walls, the building pulsing with the passage of feet as people passed through it.

“Indeed,” he replied, rubbing at his eyes. “Did you read about what the Americans have done?”

This, at least, piqued her interest. “Their Declaration? Yes, I have. Rather brave of them, I think.”

“It is a death warrant.” It was not, however, her father who spoke: it was Victor, who had come in from the rain, his dark face shining with it. Marie’s father relaxed merely at the sight of him, and she swallowed a smile. His eyes glinted and he smiled his half-crooked smile at Marie, who was not quite sure what to make of it. “‘Brave’ is a kind word. If they lose, they will all be hung. And Britain’s might is not to be underestimated.”

“Quite, quite,” Marie’s father murmured. “It’s interesting to witness history in the making. I should not like to be in the position of Congress, however, though I applaud their dedication.”

“Do you believe it an empty cause?” Marie asked, leaning back to make room for Victor as he angled past her. Her father, however, looked startled at such an accusation.

“Empty? Goodness, no. I think it’s justified, if not noble. The king has learned nothing from Constantinople, it would appear.” He waved a hand dismissively and looked, for a moment, quite exasperated. “I rather hope they win, actually. Give the king the what-for, so to speak.”

Even Victor could not help but laugh; he set down a few packages on the desk before excusing himself, saying, “It makes for good reading, nonetheless.”

What her father and Victor did not know, however, was that Marie had exchanged a number of letters with Mr. Bolton, who claimed to be close to the heart of this revolution. Marie, naturally, was suspicious of such claims, but she could not deny the fascination she had for the men and women so dedicated to their own freedom, who were so willing to lay down their lives for it. To her, it still felt impossibly far away, and yet seeing the plate so brazenly displayed upon the news-paper brought with it a rather jarring reality. The caricatures were, she reminded herself, real people, and she wondered just how they truly looked, and if the situation was really what the news-papers depicted it to be. She had learned very quickly that no single man could be trusted; they were too weak against persuasion and opinion. No – the only true way to judge a situation was to see it for oneself.

* * *

_Davenport Homestead, February 1785_

The skies grew dark with the promise of rain. They were black and low, and the sea churned just as grey and frightful. Connor could smell the rain before it came. The winds, too. The homestead continued on all the same, and George’s presence had become something normal; although the Morgans had been received with both wonder and suspicion, many were loath to see them leave. George had a strange, rough sort of charisma that, while overwhelming at times, eventually charmed all who came to know him. He was clever and good with his hands, and was book-smart in a way many of the others were not. He had a contagious love for learning and continued his endeavors with many of the residents, and with their newfound literacy, Connor’s administrative tasks became a good sight easier. George aided him in that respect, too – he had a good head on his shoulders and sorted numbers better than most people Connor knew. He looked upon Connor’s ledgers with both wonder and the derisive frown of one who was compulsively ordered in all things; even Connor’s neat columns and numbers were not enough to appease him, and the speed George showed in matters of numbers astounded all who watched him work.

Connor had not spoken to Bethany Morgan after that day. In fact, he hadn’t even so much as approached her; something about her made him uneasy, and whenever he thought of her he remembered the only other spirit he had met, as if she was some sort of reflection of it, some sort of shadow that lingered behind. He thought of that spirit, the voice that had flooded him, terrible and beautiful, and suddenly he found himself in the dark silence of his village longhouse, the air alight with fire and the voice of the unknown.

But Bethany Morgan wasn’t a spirit, nor was she a ghost. She was flesh and blood, a woman like any other, though no matter how many times he tried to remind himself of that he could never shake the sight of her lying in that bed. The starkness of her face. The hawk-like sharpness of her eyes, the tightness of her expression that almost gave him the impression that she knew him far more intimately than she ought to.

He knew he had to get answers. His colleagues grew restless at the lack of information about New York, and as desperate as it might have seemed, he _knew_ these two strangers were tangled up in those affairs. George was oblivious to what had happened to New York – he’d admitted that himself – but Bethany was riddled with the discomfort of a woman keeping secrets. It had taken only a glance for Connor to realize that.

And, so, Connor returned to the inn. By then – a few weeks after that first eventful evening – the Morgans’ presence there felt somewhat permanent. Corrine had taken a liking to both the girl and her father, as had Oliver, though he was less ready to admit it; Bethany had not wandered farther than the inn’s yard, and in the absence of their own children, Oliver and Corrine had taken to doting upon the girl as if she was their own.

“Evening, Connor!” Oliver greeted him when he ducked into the inn. The place was teeming with patrons, mostly travelers passing through the frontier. Connor did not recognize most of them and kept to the wall until he came close enough to speak to Oliver. “How can I help you, my lad?”

Connor nodded to the stairs. “I would like to see Miss Morgan,” he said.

“Go right on up, then,” Oliver replied, wiping out a tankard with his rag. “Ain’t heard a peep out of her since noon.”

Connor wove his way amongst the tables and up the stairs, away from the din and the choke of lamp-smoke; he knew which door was hers, and he went to it, pausing for a moment before knocking. He felt foolish, standing there outside the door like a child, fingers knitted together in front of him. Nervous.

“Come in!”

Connor let himself in before he could have second thoughts.

He was surprised to find her on her feet; she stood tall and dark against the window, set aglow by the lamp upon the mantel. She looked at him, her expression narrowed with suspicion. “Mister Connor,” she said. “I was not expecting you.”

“I am sorry for interrupting,” Connor began, closing the door softly and taking a few steps into the room, trying his very best not to wring his hands. She did not move to greet or approach him. “I was wondering if you were free to talk.”

After a heartbeat of silence, Bethany, who had been hunched against the cool light of the evening, drew herself to her full height and offered him a brassy smile. “Of course! Of course. You caught me daydreaming. I do apologize.” The laugh she gave him was flighty and wholly false. “Please, sit. Would you like some tea?”

Connor shook his head and sat down in one of the chairs by the window. He caught sight of her reflection in the window and found it watching him intently with those black eyes of hers, and something about it made him nervous. He looked away, turning instead to face her as she too sat beside him, gingerly lowering herself in a way that would not aggravate her wound. “You must forgive me for being so out of sorts,” she apologized. “My healing has not been easy.”

She had a strange voice to her. Her accent wasn’t really one he’d heard before – she didn’t sound as though she hailed from the Empire, nor did she sound as though she had grown up on American soil. There were fragments of Europe there – blown-open vowels he recognized from Zenger’s speech, the same rotary curl of the tongue that Chapheau sometimes used – and the well-defined consonants of the colonies, too, as well as something more obscure. He couldn’t place it, and remembered how it had bothered him when they had met in Boston, too. The timbre of it was low and somewhat masculine, though sweet, like burnt syrup stuck to the bottom of a pan.

“I ought to thank you properly for your charity,” she continued, somewhat thrown by Connor’s dutiful silence. “We might have died if not for you and Dr. White.”

Connor’s muscles grew tight. He knew not why. Instead he shifted and fought to ignore the prickle of adrenaline at the back of his neck, folding his hands and leaning the slightest degree forward to better see her face. “You need not thank me,” he said to her. “Nobody here would turn away those who are injured or distressed, as you were.”

The last whispers of her smile fell away. “You said you wished to talk to me.”

The thought of talking with her about New York had become submerged in his curiosity; she brought it to the forefront, however, and he clung to it, glad for some sense of purpose to his being there. “Yes. I came to ask you about why and how you came to the homestead, for reasons you presumably understand.”

The dryness of his words brought another smile to Bethany’s lips, though this one was sharp and genuine where the last one was not. “I do,” she replied. “It is your duty to ensure the safety of your home and its people, of course. I can assure you I am not dangerous, Mister Connor, and neither is my father. We were merely the product of an unfortunate and badly-timed circumstance.”

She told him of how her home had been set upon during the riot in New York; she told him that the area housed many abolitionists and negros, and that it was no surprise to her that it had been set upon. She told him of the carnage while still wearing that smile, wry and mirthless and disarmingly sharp, and it unnerved him in a way he could not explain. She did not appear shaken; in fact, strangely, she did not seem beset by any emotion at all, even as she talked about having to drag her unconscious father to safety. As she spoke, however, the color returned to her face, and when she turned further into the lamplight Connor found he could see her properly for the first time since he had seen her last. She looked solid, now, and Connor was finally able to settle. Flesh and blood.

It was easier, now, talking to her. She listened to him attentively, her eyes somber beyond her years and never once wandering from his face, and her voice shook his bones in a way he was unused to. Not since he had last seen the Clan Mother had he encountered someone with a voice that reached into the very depths of the earth, the soul, and yet she seemed entirely unaware of it. There was something incredibly familiar about her – more than their encounter in Boston.

“I am unsure what else I can tell you,” she said when he had exhausted all information; part of him did not believe her, however, and while he sensed no evil in her, he knew that she was hiding something. There was no evidence, of course, but Connor had learned long ago that his instincts rarely betrayed him.

“I will not keep you any longer,” Connor said after a pause, rising abruptly. She rose soon after, one hand pressed against the site of her wound, and saw him to the door.

He paused there, one hand upon the rasping wood of the doorframe. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had touched on something significant in talking to her, or that he had indeed met her once in the past.

He nodded politely and excused himself, aware of her eyes on his back all the while.

Very few things made Connor as frustrated as being lied to. His entire life had been destroyed by lies and deception just as much as it had been built upon such things, and his conversation with Bethany Morgan had left a bitter taste in his mouth. No, he did not think she was lying, particularly – but she was not telling the whole truth. He knew that much, at least.

He sought to ride to New York, but on the day of his departure he received a letter from Santiago, who bade him stay for a little while longer; they had scrounged up another scrap of correspondence following the riot that made the writers’ awareness of Connor – and the Brotherhood – very clear, and that his arrival to the city would be like shot to a powder keg. They were watching for him, and many of the Assassins believed it best to lie low for the time being. That frustrated him more than anything, and he very nearly rode out anyway, even though he knew better. Now was not the time for haste.

 _Will you ever trust me?_ Santiago once asked him. _One day you will learn to listen to what I say, Connor. You will trust that I know what I am doing._

And so he remained, as much as it pained him.

He had more than enough work to keep him occupied between keeping the homestead’s leger and working the Brotherhood’s books as well. There were clerks to do such work, of course, but Connor preferred to keep more sensitive matters for himself. Trust was a difficult thing for him to contend with. He visited Lexington to survey the outpost there, and met with a number of scouts who were posted down in the Black Creek region.

Another fortnight passed with no word from New York aside from a brief letter or two from Santiago and Zenger, as well as a note from Dobby, who had no pressing news to deliver from West Point. The travelers that passed through the homestead cited no great distress in New York, either, which allowed Connor a little bit of ease, though not much. Unwilling to wait and stagnate on the homestead, however, Connor made preparations to travel to Boston, partly for Brotherhood work and partly because there were errands that needed to be completed now that the deep winter was over.

It took the most part of three weeks for Bethany’s wound to heal enough for travel. It was still tender, but Lyle was astounded by how rapidly she was healing; her pallid complexion had regained its color and her strength had returned to the point where she was able to help Corrine manage the inn. Laughing, Lyle told Connor how she attributed her stalwart constitution to her mother letting her lick floors and eat dirt as a child.

“It seems a shame to send ‘em away,” Godfrey told Terry as they took tea by the mill. “Old George has done a whole lotta good round here, what with all the teaching.”

“And the merchandise,” Terry added. “I ain’t never seen the convoys in such order. You seen him work an abacus yet, Godfrey? It’s like magic.”

“D’you think Connor’ll send ‘em back to New York?”

“I did not plan to.”

The two men started so violently that Terry’s tea splashed across the back of his hand; hissing with the pain of it, he and Godfrey turned to find Connor standing just outside the tree line, his hood thrown back and his hair-beads glittering in the sun. He made his way towards them.

“You shouldn’t go ‘round eavesdroppin’,” Godfrey grumbled, the tips of his ears flushed pink.

“I was just passing. Why would you think I would send them away?”

Terry shrugged. “Now that the girl’s better, we thought –,”

“I never turn away people willing to work,” Connor said. “And George is working. He is doing very good work, actually, and Miss Morgan has been helping at the inn also. Do you want them to leave?”

“Lord, no!” Godfrey exclaimed. “Why we were just talkin’ ‘bout him, how old George’s done us good – If you need a good word for him, Connor, me an’ Terry would be happy to put in a few.”

Connor regarded them. Truthfully, he had no plans to send the Morgans anywhere, especially if they did not want to go. That had never been his nature, and many of the homestead’s residents – if not _all_ of them – had come upon it by chance, or in the face of such misfortune.

“We will let them decide.”

That, at least, seemed to be in the interest of everyone.

“Her name is Venus.”

Connor, not expecting a voice to rise so close by, turned abruptly on his heel to find Bethany Morgan standing in the shade of a great pine tree a few yards from the stable yard. She was watching – unbeknownst to him until that moment – as he saw to the horses, and doubtlessly saw the way he tended to the great mare she had brought to him.

“Venus?”

She made her way towards him, and Connor saw neither discomfort nor any sign that her wound bothered her aside from the hand laid lightly against her busk. She reached the door of Venus’s stable and extended her hand; the horse gave one sniff before pressing her nose against Bethany’s palm and greeting her like a lovesick child.

“Yes. That’s her name.” Bethany looked different in the daylight. She was as tall as he remembered, stately and with a strong, severe face; she was dressed neatly, now, and had he not seen the rigidness of her gait he would have thought she was healed completely. His gaze, however, lingered on the deep scar across her mouth, glimmering silver in the sunlight. He had not noticed it before, neither in the inn nor in Boston, and yet he was not surprised by it. It was and old mark, long since healed and shining silver over her lip, splitting its pinkness. He wondered how she had come by such injury.

“She is beautiful,” he said, and as though she knew he was talking about her, Venus glanced at Connor and whickered, stamping gently against the ground and tossing her head. Bethany chuckled.

“Yes, and doesn’t she know it. It was why I chose that name – Venus, goddess of love and beauty, a creature of immense power and charisma. Her pettiness can be quite in character, too.” Bethany reached out and stroked Venus’s muzzle. “She likes you.”

“She seems to be happy here.”

“She didn’t like the city. She’s not easily spooked, but she becomes very anxious if she’s penned up for too long.”

Connor could understand that.

Just as he had before, though a little more conscious now he had an audience, Connor led Venus out into the yard. She set about prancing around him, behaving even more outrageously now that she knew Bethany was watching. Connor, just as he had done many times before, tried to swing up onto her back, but she refused to stop for him, or even slow down, and sent him skidding across the dirt. Bethany stood leaning against the stable door, cheeks pink with the late winter winds, the faintest of smiles upon her mouth.

“She’s teasing you,” she called after Connor was thrown yet again. He picked himself up, a little embarrassed at having been cast from Venus’s back in full view of another, but Bethany seemed to be very familiar with the mare’s behavior and saw no fault in him for it. Raising her fingers to her lips, she let out a short, shrill whistle, and Venus trotted over to her as would a small dog; Bethany reached out and smacked her nose without any real strength, and Venus nipped at her fingers in response, her tail whipping. “Behave,” Bethany told her sternly.

Venus glanced back at Connor and, tossing her head with a derisive snort, made her way back over to him. Upon reaching him, she came to a halt and stood perfectly still.

Hesitantly, Connor reached out and placed a hand against her flank. He used his other hand to lever himself upwards, and before he knew it, he was astride her broad, sleek back. Venus made not a step until Bethany made the same strange chirping noise, at which point she began to respond to him. She steered beautifully, and just by riding her Connor could tell she had never been broken.

After riding her around the yard for a few minutes, Connor slid from her back and fed her a lump of sugar from his pocket as thanks. He swung open the gate, letting her thunder out into the woodland pastures, her coat gleaming in the sun. Bethany stood by the gate.

“A strange horse,” Connor murmured. “You have an uncanny way with her.”

“She didn’t trust you,” Bethany said. “She has never been broken, you see. She bears only those she wishes to.”

“What changed her mind?”

After a pause Bethany said, “I told her she could.”

Connor looked at her and she met his gaze without any reservation or inkling of shyness. Such was her height that they stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder, and he found he did not need to look down at her as he did to most other women he knew, something he found a little strange. He shut the gate, and the two of them began down to the road and towards the manor.

“How is your wound?” Connor asked, nodding to where her hand lay over her belly.

“Healing, though hardly as quickly as I would like.” She looked vaguely pained but entirely more comfortable than the last time he’d seen her. “If Corrine asks me to peel another potato I think I may scream.”

Connor chuckled and shook his head, earning a frown from her.

“Are you laughing at me, sir?”

“No,” he assured her hurriedly. “Not at all. I… I understand what Corrine is like, is all. No, no, she did not seem like the housebound type at all; her shoulders were broad and strong, and he could tell from her hands that she was hardly the kind of woman to sit around and employ herself in needlework. His pace slowed a little, considering. “I am due to run some errands in Boston soon,” he began. “If you are willing to accompany me, I could use another pair of hands.” He wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, asking her to go with him. Was it too forward? Would she be offended that he would ask her to be alone with him for so long? Was she healed enough for such an undertaking? His worries mounted, but before they could reach a crescendo Bethany’s frown softened and relaxed in relief. They came to a stop beneath the deep shadows of the manor’s eaves.

“I should be glad for it, provided I do not have to lay eyes on a single unpeeled potato,” she told him, and he released his breath in relief. “Are you sure it’s quite all right I come? I would hate to inconvenience you.”

“Of course.” He shrugged, offering a half-smile that felt clumsy on his face.

Seeing such tender intrigue on Bethany’s face – which had, up until that point, appeared to him as something very somber and harsh – was a strange thing; it almost seemed out-of-place, what with the straight line of her brow and the serious set of her mouth, but it afforded her a lightness that Connor had not seen before, taking the bite out of her suspicion and her sternness.

“Beth, there you are!” Connor and Bethany turned to see George toiling up the hill to the manor, hat in his hand, waving. He arrived a little short of breath, his face pleasantly ruddy. “Ah, Connor, hello to you too, of course.” He turned back to Bethany. “Should you be out of bed?”

Bethany gave him a long-suffering look and replied, “If I remained in bed any longer I would have died.”

George looked between them, unsure what to make of it; eventually he dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief and smiled, looking truly relieved for the first time since Connor had met him. “Well, I’m glad you’ve regained your energy, at least. Don’t go making trouble for Connor, now, you hear?”

“I’ll try my best.”

Seeing this push-and-pull of humor between George and his daughter made Connor wonder; he wondered after his own father, after his mother, wondered what life might have been like if they’d survived this long. If they had been afforded better circumstances. _Kinder_ circumstances. Connor had never had family, not since he left his village, not since he’d murdered his own father. He had Achilles, certainly, and the others of the homestead, who he considered as close to his heart as kin, but… it wasn’t the same. He coveted the easy familiarity of George and Bethany Morgan. He envied it, and the pleasantness of their company was soured.

“I shan’t keep you any longer, Mister Connor. When shall we leave?”

“I had planned to leave tomorrow morning, if it pleases you.”

She gave him another one of those barely-there smiles, nodding. “That is very agreeable.”

George, his face stormy, glowered at Bethany. “Leave? You oughtn’t to travel so soon, Beth,” he warned her. “But Lord knows I won’t be able to stop you. Just don’t make too much trouble for Connor.”

“I will be the perfect lady, I promise.”

Her father offered his arm, and she took it, giving Connor a polite nod before allowing George to assist her down the pathway. Connor gazed after them, listening to their voices as they rose along the wind. He turned, then, back to the manor, which rather than being filled with a family as it should have been, stood empty.


End file.
